European Environment and Sustainable Development Advisory Councils | Working Groups

Sustainable Land Use

2011: Follow-up EEAC Statement 2010; Public Goods, impacts on land use, landscape

2009-2010: Preparing the 18th EEAC Annual Conference with a statement on Sustainable Land Use

2009: Land Use and the Global Economy

For the main outcomes of the past years, please continue reading the archived pages

2011: Follow-up EEAC Statement 2010; Public Goods, impacts on land use, landscape

Acting Chair: Jan Verheeke, Secretary General, Environment and Nature Council of Flanders (SAR Minaraad)

On 14 October 2011, at the Working Group meeting in Bruges, the following points were taken up to be elaborated:

the discussion on public goods

the impacts of the different policy fields on land use and vice-versa

the aspect of landscape.

The WG also renamed itself into "Agricultural Policy and Sustainable Land Use" reflecting the strong connection between the two. The statement is being disseminated to stakeholders, whose feedback will be discussed in the next WG meeting.

2009-2010: Preparing the 18th EEAC Annual Conference with a statement on Sustainable Land Use

Acting Chair: Jan Verheeke, Secretary General, Environment and Nature Council of Flanders (SAR Minaraad)

Main outcome 2009-2010

During 2009-2010, the WG prepared the EEAC Statement 2010 on Sustainable Land Use. In July 2010 the WG members adopted the text, after which the councils participating in the WG endorsed the document as a WG Statement, after which it passed through a wider range of councils for formal endorsement. Finally 14 councils from 10 countries endorsed it as an EEAC Statement. On 15 October, Prof. Jose Lima Santos (CNADS, PT) presented the EEAC Statement as a key note speaker at the Annual Conference in Bruges.

Conference website
EEAC Statement 2010: Sustainable Land Use (pdf. 0,4 Mb)
Download the presentation by prof. Lima Santos

Meetings

On 12 July, the WG finalised the Statement "Sustainable Land Use - A Central Challenge for Society", which was endorsed by all 11 councils actively participating in the WG. It was an exiting yet intensive process for the whole WG and the EEAC wants to thank the chair, Jan Verheeke of the Minaraad for his continuous efforts pulling all strings together concerning the statement and the programme of the annual conference. The WG is now seeking wider endorsement from all EEAC councils so that it may become an EEAC statement, which means supporting the main lines of argument.

Summary:
In its statement, the EEAC considers 'sustainable land use' not as something that can be reached on isolated pieces of land: specific land uses must be considered in its combination with other, neighboring land uses and with its repercussions on landscapes, watersheds, and all relevant scales up to the global level. 'Sustainable land use' can then be seen as a dynamic state of land mosaics serving to meet current local and global needs while retaining the potential to meet future requirements. The challenge of 'sustainable land use' has many economic, political and governance aspects. Important ones among them are to integrate or harmonize the different EU policies that have impact on land use and to effectively incentivize sustainable land use. The EEAC asks the Commission to support an EU scheme aimed at a coherent network for connecting and strengthening landscapes. The EEAC recommends that the concept of 'sustainable land use' should form one of the main topics to be taken forward within the context of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy

On 2 March in the morning, the WG met in the Minaraad office in Brussels. Among the 19 participants from 13 countries, the WG welcomed members of the newly formed secretariat of the Dutch Councils of Environment and Infrastructure (RLI), which combines the secretariats of the former Dutch councils RLG and VROMRaad. The RLI had commissioned a team of the Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR) for some scientific input to the WG's topic. An expert from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) was also invited as discussant. Dr. Peter Kuikman (WUR) gave an inspiring presentation entitled: "Land Use and Climate Change: options for EU and beyond". Most of the meeting was filled with discussing the scope of the 2010 Statement, which eventually is to be made concrete in a paper written by the WG Chair by the end of March.

download the presentation by Dr. Kuikman (members only)

2009: Land Use and the Global Economy

Chair: Huib Silvis, Council Member, Netherlands Council for the Rural Areas (RLG) Coordinator: Agneta Andersson (RLG)

Main Outcome 2009
In 2009 the Working group Agriculture (WG Agri) covered the broad subject of land use. On the work programme was the organisation of a workshop on Land Use and the Global Economy, with discussions on the impact of the recent financial developments and the relation to the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (priority field Conservation and Management of Natural Resources). The WG Biodiversity together with ENCA contributed to the event .

On 30 January, the WG had a preparatory WG meeting in Brussels. The meeting focused on preparing for the seminar on 'Land Use and Global Economy' on 5 June, at Scotland House, in Brussels. The Strategic objective of the seminar was described as: looking at land use as a unifying concept and call for integrated policy and governance for land use on different geographical levels from global to local. The discussion also pointed at the need for management and unifying concepts to analyse land use at the landscape level. The group found it important to describe the global economy and financial crisis as a system crisis that highlights the dilemmas between regulation versus markets. A suggested result of the seminar was to formulate questions for the policy process and to function as a preparation of the Annual Conference in 2010. On the programme, the WG decided to start with a global perspective on the topic, followed by a theoretical approach on how to look at land use at a landscape level followed by some case-studies. It was suggested that the afternoon would contain the ecological aspects, the governance aspects, and the SD-perspective.

On 5 June, the WG held the Seminar on Land Use and Global Economy, at Scotland House, in Brussels. The seminar gave a global perspective on the topic, a theoretical approach on how to look at land use at a landscape level as input for the SD-policy process (EU, but also global and local). The outcome of the seminar will hopefully contribute to the EU SDS-review and will provide input for the theme of the EEAC Annual Conference 2010 on Sustainable Land use.

Following to the seminar held on 5 June, the WG summarized its results in the report "Land use in an Era of Global Change" .

Download the theme information on the Seminar
Download the report "Land use in an Era of Global Change" (pdf. 5,27 MB)

For the main outcomes of the past years, please continue reading the archived pages